


hands intended red

by tin_girl



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works
Genre: Angst, Canon Universe, M/M, are we going to talk about how hamlet's dying scene almost mirrors r&j finale or what, criminal overuse of metaphor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-01
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26237725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tin_girl/pseuds/tin_girl
Summary: What Horatio wants to do is shield Hamlet’s eyes from a world gone terrible and tell him to be silly again, have him listen and have him next look at Denmark the white of their youth, washed clean of stains like something waiting to be coloured with good things, better things, anything but this.What he does is stare at the dirtied cuff of Hamlet’s sleeve and mourn how he is allowed dirt now – how they’ll allow the prince gone mad anything, now that he’s been denied everything that matters.
Relationships: Hamlet & Horatio, Hamlet/Horatio (Hamlet), background Hamlet/Ophelia
Comments: 10
Kudos: 36





	hands intended red

**Author's Note:**

> the language in this is very much modern because there's no way I'm trying to make it sound archaic -- I'd fail spectacularly, and so, no thou or thys or methinks's 
> 
> anyway, i was 17 when this play first ruined my life and now here we are, 5 years later, life still ruined, what fun :,)

My dove, your name is water in my hand.

I will offer it with salt and bread and the charm extracted

without resistance from your silent mouth.

I will canonize your name for mysteries unsolved,

words unborn,

because you suffered, my _calavera_ , my sad, sad saint,

my writer who did not write.

Because your beautiful sorrow sprouted like a stalk,

blossoming calligraphy.

~Patti Smith, _Eve of All Saints_

It’s after Hamlet has chased his father’s ghost through the night that he talks to Horatio of hands.

“Yours are good,” he tells him gravely. “It’s as simple as that.”

Horatio stares at his palms, flexes his fingers, the heart line, longer than most people’s, the life line, longer still – he doesn’t yet know that soon he won’t want it long at all.

“They’re hands,” he says simply, because he’s learned about tendons and bones, he knows what hands are for, and there’s no poetry to them, none at all. You can’t read goodness out of skin, even though you can read status (Hamlet’s hands pale and smooth, royal as if he’d truly bleed blue were someone to cut him, only let no one ever try).

“I’m remembering that time I saw you with your hands scraped raw, Horatio,” Hamlet says, both patient and anything but. Lately, there’s an urgency to everything Hamlet says, words hurled out like some kind of a violence – if they’re birds flying out of the prince’s mouth, they’re ones that are already shot. “I thought it was the sun playing tricks at first, colouring you red.”

“Oh?”

“It’s not that I could not believe that you would ever hurt someone – though of course, I could not. It’s that I could not believe anyone would ever dare hurt you. See, back then, I was still very silly, and thought the world rewarded goodness.”

What Horatio wants to do is shield Hamlet’s eyes from a world gone terrible and tell him to be silly again, have him listen and have him next look at Denmark the white of their youth, washed clean of stains like something waiting to be coloured with good things, better things, anything but this.

What he does is stare at the dirtied cuff of Hamlet’s sleeve and mourn how he is allowed dirt now – how they’ll allow the prince gone mad anything, now that he’s been denied everything that matters.

“It was a rope, not a someone,” he says carefully and remembers helping merchants calm an agitated horse in the square, how the animal’s eye gleamed bluer than the sky and less green than the sea, the pupil growing larger and larger as Horatio held on to the rope and kept whispering, for an hour, for two.

(He’s glad it was him alone – Hamlet, he knows, wouldn’t stand staring into that sort of a perfect, round black, which is why Horatio loves him, and which is why loving him is quite effortless.)

“Oh, but I was silly-er still, Horatio, and could not believe anyone would dare hurt you, and could not believe any _thing_ would dare, either. I suppose you laugh at this kind of physics, but it was one of the things I always expected of the world: the leaves to turn yellow come autumn, my father to live, you to be unhurt.”

Horatio is a scholar, and he’s studied the laws of nature – he knows there are no exceptions, not even for princes.

“Here I am, unhurt,” he says gently, and Hamlet smiles, grim, _are you? Are you?_

Here’s what Horatio knows of Hamlet’s hands: they are smooth, they are pale, and they have been in Ophelia’s hair. He doesn’t begrudge her that – he wouldn’t know what to do with Hamlet’s hands even if he did have them, and he doesn’t divide the world into what belongs to him or doesn’t besides. Rather, there are things he’s been lucky enough to witness, and those he never has, and here’s Hamlet, momentarily in Horatio’s pupils – the loveliest abidance to nature’s laws he can think of.

(Don’t be scared of eyes, he wants to say, thinking of that horse, thinking of Claudius. Mine are not empty and black. Look to me, and I’ll always be already looking to you, filled with you, reflecting you.)

(If you think the world a shell picked clean, think again, because I only have the world in my eyes when I have you in my eyes.)

(Horatio would make a poor poet, and Hamlet deserves songs, but Horatio has his own shameful half-whispers to give nonetheless, and he’s giving, he’s giving, because oh – Hamlet’s life line is— different. Horatio never traced it with his fingers, he wouldn’t dare, but he’s traced it with his eyes, and remembers it, not having looked away quite fast enough.)

“Keep the scars closed,” Hamlet begs, folding Horatio’s fingers, pressing them to the insides of Horatio’s hands, his own cold like he’s caught death from his father already. “In all the world, you are the only untainted thing.”

Horatio shakes his head.

“The only number I’m certain of, then,” Hamlet says, tilting his head. “I trust no one but you, Horatio. Allow it.”

Horatio does.

*

Ophelia’s hair is like wheat, and Horatio has often wondered whether, when Hamlet buries his hands in it, it feels like tangling them in life itself.

Now she’s drowned, he thinks of what water must have done to it.

Were you gentle with it? he asks the brook later. Were you gentle with her?

Because Hamlet loved her, so did Horatio. He might be a scholar, and he would make a poor poet, but what he loves, he loves because Hamlet, for Hamlet, always. If he smiles at a clumsy sparrow, it’s only because he’s already thinking of telling Hamlet all about it later, and if he sees a meadow he likes, he only likes it for the thought of bringing Hamlet there and having his bones settle into the once-innocence of his father’s crown and Denmark happy under its weight, the two of them lost in the fields like grasshoppers, not having to marry or kill just yet, not yet having to _know._

Hamlet doesn’t have the face made for the crown, never has. Claudius, on the other hand—

But his heart. What a heart.

*

“It’s the part of you that I like best,” Horatio insisted once, limbs spread as he stared up at the sky. Out of the two of them, he was the one who’d never shield his eyes against the sun. He’d stare right at it, all the while anxious for Hamlet to look away, lest he hurt himself.

“Not possible, Horatio,” Hamlet scoffed, fisting grass. Gently, gently, Horatio almost scolded – back then, the world was still lovely. “Far too poetic for you, this talk of hearts.”

“You misunderstand. The heart is but an organ, I haven’t forgotten, but it is one that lets blood flow through you. It does to you what springs do to Earth. How could I not like something you couldn’t do without?”

“Oh, but I _could_ do without a heart,” Hamlet said, even then. Even then. “I could – You’re always so calm, Horatio. Nothing moves you.”

A lie, that. Liar.

“Teach me how to have my heart be more well-timed clock than an ill bird taken prisoner.”

That, the only thing Horatio ever refused him. He got scared – Hamlet couldn’t ever learn that if Horatio’s heart was a clock, it was one timed to Hamlet’s own and not to the travels of the sun.

(The sun knew. That’s why he wouldn’t look away from it, even when his eyes watered and when he saw nothing but bursts of colour, like being hit or being kissed – he wouldn’t know which. Both, perhaps.)

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Hamlet asked him then, like a prophecy. Obscene, that, in pure daylight, their destinies already as much in the past as they were in the future.

“You know I don’t,” Horatio said truthfully and breathed a sigh of relief when a cloud rolled slowly to cover the sun, like a lazy blink. “I will never believe in ghosts.”

“Not until you see one with your own eyes, you mean.”

“Mm, perhaps not even then,” Horatio told him, because he knew all about ghosts, even if he didn’t believe in them – Hamlet’s hand seeming to linger whenever he’d help Horatio up, Horatio’s profile winking inside Hamlet’s pupils just as he’d turn his head, Hamlet’s mouth quiet but three-syllables-shaped whenever he’d look a little delighted and a little lost – all things he saw but knew better than to trust. He was calm, he had studied books, he _knew better_ , even if he didn’t feel better at all. His own heart a ghost, knocking helplessly inside his chest and always arriving at the same opening, but just an organ all the same.

Just an organ pumping blood, he’d remind himself every morning, and every afternoon, and every evening, instead of saying a prayer.

He loved it dearly in Hamlet but scorned it in himself.

*

“I suppose you believe in ghosts now,” Hamlet says when resting from pretending at madness, before Ophelia, before Laertes, before.

“Mmm.”

“Isn’t it strange, Horatio? I don’t blink twice at dead men speaking from the grave, but I’m too bitter to believe in kindness. Say, are you real?”

He touches Horatio on the shoulder, as if to check, that ghost of a linger, and Horatio allows it because he’s never known anything but bowing his head to this –- the only thing he’s ever learned without having to read of it first.

*

Hamlet cries once. He stands with hollow eyes, and then suddenly they’re not hollow anymore, suddenly there’s so much emotion that no wonder it spills over.

Horatio doesn’t know what hurts more – that Hamlet is crying at all or that he would let Horatio see – and doesn’t know what to do either. He wishes it was before, clocks ago, wishes he could lead Hamlet to Ophelia who’d surely—

“Hush,” Hamlet says, like it’s Horatio who’s crying. “Just a moment.”

Horatio sits next to him and no longer knows what hands are for.

What he does know: he still won’t name the thing he’s felt around Hamlet ever since he can remember, even though he’s learned what to call it at last, because it seems like it should stay unchristened for a little bit longer, this small tenderness, this desire to keep Hamlet warm even when it’s hot outside and he can’t possibly be cold.

To keep him safe even when there’s no threat, Horatio’s hand forever going to the sword he doesn’t carry, even when there’s nothing but air and grass around Hamlet.

“Why can’t I kill him? Oh, why can’t I simply _kill_ him?”

Horatio’s useless, useless hands.

*

“Isn’t she beautiful?” Hamlet said of Ophelia once, scribbling a poem on his knee (how Horatio loved that knee). “She has Mother’s hair, but a smile all her own. I wish her to be always smiling.”

I wish you to be always smiling, Horatio thought, didn’t say. Even if you’re to be smiling somewhere away from me.

*

They send Hamlet to England, and Horatio’s heart is a weary but well-timed clock – it doesn’t stop, only goes on ticking, no matter how the springs groan.

Hamlet comes back whole, in one piece, a miracle.

“Say, are you real?, Horatio doesn’t ask, because he’s afraid of the answer. He’s no longer certain of anything except this one thing: Hamlet is all bones, and Horatio wants to feed him, Hamlet is all tired eyes, and Horatio wants to send him to sleep, Hamlet is scared, and Horatio wants to reassure him, but oh, he’s run out of good things to promise.

Always so calm, Horatio, Hamlet says again, shaking his head in wonder. Teach me?

Horatio doesn’t. Hamlet can’t know, but he’s forgotten how.

*

He and the Queen dislike each other, even though neither of them would ever acknowledge it. Horatio, against himself, resents her for not loving Hamlet enough, and the Queen, perhaps also against herself, resents him for loving Hamlet too much. Of course, they might both be wrong – after all, what does Horatio know of a mother’s love, and then, who’s to say someone like Hamlet can ever be loved too much?

(There’s a hole somewhere in Hamlet now – anything good one gives him, he doesn’t know how to keep and lets trickle out. Nevertheless, Horatio intends to keep giving.)

(Nevertheless, Horatio loves the Queen, for Hamlet loves her so, even if he’s forgotten.)

*

Hamlet is wounded and bleeds – red, after all. Horatio doesn’t understand. It’s simple science, a sword breaching skin, and yet he doesn’t understand. People scream of poison, and Horatio’s heart is a clock and malfunctions, stops, speeds up, is slack, is a fist, there, gone, an unbearable obtrusion and a lack more unbearable still.

I’m dead, Horatio, is what Hamlet says, just for him, because Horatio is already at his side, of course he is, where else would he be?

I’m dead, you live.

A lie, that. _Liar._

Horatio reaches for the cup with the last of poison, rolled far from Gertrude’s limp hand, and wonders at the stray thought he has just then of licking the liquid off the very sword that wounded Hamlet instead – too daring a thing to ask for, even though, hours before, Hamlet stared into Horatio’s eyes, saw himself there, seemed to understand, pressed his thumb to the skittish knock of blood at the side of Horatio’s neck like an answer of a sort, kept it there.

If you did ever hold me in your heart, Hamlet says, and oh, the things Horatio has learned, how he’s unlearned even more. All that talk of organs, blood, veins, and arteries, when really, Horatio’s heart was always meant to be a room prepared for Hamlet but empty of him, clumsily wrapping itself around what he wanted but would never have. 

He remembers it now – the rough scrape of that rope on the skin of his hands as the horse trashed, how Hamlet’s worry and almost-rage at the dried blood later was the best thing Horatio had ever had happen to him, and the worst.

Always so calm, Horatio, except he’s anything but now, hands clammy with Hamlet’s blood – and who knew God could ever think up a red so cruel? – eyes leaking, lips trembling.

His shaking hands – what are they good for? What are they really good for? They know how to calm a crazed animal, and how to draw a sword, but they don’t know how to frame a loved one’s face, or how to stop blood from escaping.

Yours are good, Hamlet doesn’t say as he dies. It’s as simple as that.

That life line on Horatio’s palm, far too long. They were too young when they first checked if their hands mirrored each other, him and Hamlet, grass collapsing around them like it was falling asleep.

It must be a sort of treachery, to use one’s hands to end oneself, and yet how sweet it seems. How very sweet.

And how dare anyone hurt Hamlet, how dare any _thing_ – oh, damn them all, and damn the blade, and Horatio has Hamlet’s blood smeared all over his mouth now from pressing his hand to it and wishing it all away.

Still shaking, Horatio dips a handkerchief in the fallen cup, lets it soak up the last drops of poison. He will tell the tale – always _so very calm_ – and then, once everyone has heard, he’ll suck the liquid out of the fabric, or use a sword if it doesn’t suffice.

(He will make a poor poet, but for Hamlet, he’s ready to be anything).

What do I see here?, says Fortinbras, and Horatio squares his shoulders for the last time. The last time. The last time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please consider leaving a comment if you have any thoughts? <3 
> 
> (just please, don't yell at me, I know this was angsty, but I fully intend to write a comedic high school au about them at some point, too) (English is not my first language, so if anything sounds odd, don't hesitate to let me know so I can correct it :))
> 
> Oh, and I'm on tumblr @yoyointhegarden (shsh, I owe my life to Kate Bush)


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